"By the way, where is that?" I asked.

"I built the fire with it. But when I took it from him it was a
six-shooter I had hold of, and pointing at my breast. And then Steve
spoke. 'Do you think you're fit to live?' Steve said; and I got hot at
him, and I reckon I must have told him what I thought of him. You heard
me, I expect?"

"Glad I didn't. Your language sometimes is--"

He laughed out. "Oh, I account for all this that's happening just like
you do. If we gave our explanations, they'd be pretty near twins."

"The horses saw a bear, then?"

"Maybe a bear. Maybe "--but here the tide caught him again--"What's your
idea about dreams?"

My ropes were all out. "Liver--nerves," was the best I could do.

But now he swam strongly by himself.

"You may think I'm discreditable," he said, "but I know I am. It ought
to take more than--well, men have lost their friendships before. Feuds
and wars have cloven a right smart of bonds in twain. And if my haid
is going to get shook by a little old piece of newspaper--I'm ashamed I
burned that. I'm ashamed to have been that weak."

"Any man gets unstrung," I told him. My ropes had become straws; and I
strove to frame some policy for the next hours.

We now finished breakfast and set forth to catch the horses. As we drove
them in I found that the Virginian was telling me a ghost story. "At
half-past three in the morning she saw her runaway daughter standing
with a babe in her arms; but when she moved it was all gone. Later they
found it was the very same hour the young mother died in Nogales. And
she sent for the child and raised it herself. I knowed them both back
home. Do you believe that?"

I said nothing.

"No more do I believe it," he asserted. "And see here! Nogales time
is three hours different from Richmond. I didn't know about that point
then."

Once out of these mountains, I knew he could right himself; but even
I, who had no Steve to dream about, felt this silence of the peaks was
preying on me.

"Her daughter and her might have been thinkin' mighty hard about each
other just then," he pursued. "But Steve is dead. Finished. You cert'nly
don't believe there's anything more?"

"I wish I could," I told him.

"No, I'm satisfied. Heaven didn't never interest me much. But if there
was a world of dreams after you went--" He stopped himself and turned
his searching eyes away from mine. "There's a heap o' darkness wherever
you try to step," he said, "and I thoug